Oliver Stone has done cinematic portraits of Nixon and George W Bush, and has opinions about them and just about everything else

OLIVER STONE IS like the Charlie Sheen character in Platoon in one very telling way: he’s a crusader. Twenty-three years after making the semi-autobiographical Vietnam War epic, the 62-year-old director has not lost the belligerent glint in his eye that says: “Here is someone looking for trouble.”
As if JFK, Born on the Fourth of July and Natural Born Killers did not do enough to wind up the establishment, Stone’s latest offering, W., throws more than a pair of shoes at the outgoing US president. Starring Josh Brolin as Bush, this is yet another Oliver Stone whack at, in his words, “the hypocrisy of political power in America.”

Wearing a suit jacket, dark jeans and a creased white shirt open at the collar, the only breaks in Stone’s long, rambling tirades come when he clears his nose with a large checkered handkerchief. Hollywood, he says, is “the biggest whorehouse on the block” and a “supermarket shelf.” The war in Iraq has “morally degraded America as a nation.” Greed, for want of a better word, is bad, he says, reversing the words of Gordon Gekko, the roguish trader he created in the 1980s money-movie Wall Street. Stone has an axe to grind about pretty much everything. power contributor Robin Hicks caught up with him at a small press briefing in December in Kuala Lumpur.

Your new film, W., does not paint a glowing portrait of the most recent American president. Did you run into any problems getting it made?
Nope. I made the film independently through non-American producers. Outside interference wasn’t an issue. By the way, I hear on good authority that Bush has seen the movie. Not sure if he liked it though.

You’ve been accused of being liberal with the truth when making movies based on historical events. How much of W. is accurate?
Josh Brolin makes him a larger-than-life character. But that’s movies. Bush is charming, but he’s also an arrogant bully. That much we know. And he carries himself like a John Wayne character. “A man of his word.” Supposedly.

But you know what, Americans like a cowboy who sticks to his guns. They like that he’s a man you can have a beer with. And they like the fact that he’s stupid.

This film is a satire, but it’s not deliberately funny. Bush is not a tragic character, because he doesn’t learn anything in the entire movie.
As for JFK, well, the Kennedy assassination was a huge black hole. I can’t say that I had that dead straight right. Neither can anyone. And in Nixon I tried to go behind the man, but can’t say I had him bang on. I’m a dramatist as much as I am a historian. And when history and drama combine, you get different perspectives on reality.

Not a fan of Bush, then …?
That man has done more damage than any American president in history. When I went to Vietnam in 1968, George W Bush dropped out and served in the national guard. He’s an armchair patriot. When 9/11 came along, he called himself a war president. He loved the idea of kicking ass with smart bombs and laser technology.

No president has walked out of office with two wars going on. In eight years, he has taken us to a place we’ve never been before. He changed the nature of government in a deep sense, like Napoleon changed France, shattering a great army by fighting too many wars.
He dominated the media in a fascinating way. His was a secret presidency. Nixon got caught out with Watergate. But it’s been very difficult to pin anything on Bush. Inside the government there is an inner cabal of 12 people. Those who disagree aren’t allowed in. These people brook no opposition, and have decided US policy before they come into work in the morning.

You’ve now made movies about three presidents [Nixon, Kennedy and Bush]. Do you have one brewing about Obama?
Nixon and Kennedy were the two polar opposites of my youth, and Bush has been a truly incredible president. Obama’s is an amazing story, but I don’t think I’ll make a movie about him just yet.

So do you think that Obama is the real deal?
Obama is a man who seems to know who he is. There is nothing fake about him. He earned his destiny. Hollywood didn’t create the Obama brand, nor did anything or anyone else. He made it himself. He’s getting black kids to think that they can be something other than a gang member.

Don’t you think, though, that he was simply the right man in the right place at the right time?
The really sad thing about the whole global economic debacle is that it gave people a license to say Obama won because of the economy. Obama has his point of view, but that point of view has to stand up to the grinding forces of media. As soon as he’d won he had a microphone in his face and a question on what he’s going to do to fight terror. Why should the media set the agenda?

Winston Churchill was a horrible domestic leader, but he was a great leader at war. We can only hope that Obama is good at both. Afghanistan will become another Vietnam, if it’s not that already. But I think Obama will tackle it – and terrorism – in the right way. As he’s said, we have to teach, to educate, to clothe and to medicate them. That’s the way to defeat terrorism.

You cannot use money or force to fight terror. A couple of cheap planes flown into a few buildings showed that. Our ancestors built a great country out of blood, but this blood is dead. America remains a fundamentally intelligent, progressive country. However, with a trillion dollar defense budget we are a national security state. We are fundamentally indebted to the military. They control us as much as we control them.

Don’t you get tired of being so controversial?
People call me a provocateur. But my job is to tell stories. Those stories are supposed to make people think. People love amnesia. Bottle it, and they’d buy it. The United States of Amnesia – has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Comfort is what people want. In Asia people are comforted by branded goods even if they are fake.

It’s not easy getting angry and rattling cages for a living, but I manage it. In 1993, the press slammed Natural Born Killers because I said the media was making money off fear, greed and violence. I stand by that film. I was born a conformist Republican in 1946. We grew up scared shitless of the Russians. Everything was a communist conspiracy stirred up by the media. There was a single mind conspiring to plot our doom: the “other.”

It’s still true now, with the “war on terror.” Why not have a war on fear? Now we have more channels, but it’s more of the same. Conformity and conspiracy of thought in the media. In 1962 we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. Life magazine said prepare for war. We were all going to die. Now it’s climate change and the global economic crisis. These are real problems, but not as grave as they’re made out to be.

There’s heroism everywhere everyday. People who teach, who care, are compassionate. Most people are good people. But when I read the papers, it’s as if as there’s this Titantic situation all the time. But you know what, I’ve been there before. And I don’t believe it.

What made you convert from being a conformist Republican to what you are today?
I was a slow learner. The story of Ron Kovic [the paralyzed Vietnam War veteran whose autobiography Born on the Fourth of July Stone based a film on in 1989, for which he won an Oscar] represents a lot of my own passage. Ron came to his conclusions quicker than I did, helped, perhaps, by a wheelchair. I was divided for a long time. It was only as the Nixon administration progressed that I started to see through the charade, the hypocrisy of political power in America.

By the way, I still keep in touch with Ron. He’s still a healthy, strong man.

Is there a Hollywood agenda, such as depicting Muslims as terrorists?
Hollywood isn’t quite the propaganda machine people like to think it is. There are a bunch of pretty well made Iraq-related movies – like In The Kingdomwith Jamie Foxx – in which you see smart, well-dressed Arabs who think and deal with ambiguous situations sensibly. And I’d argue that it’s going the other way. Americans are now cast as people who think in Bush terms: cowboys who see the world in black and white.

But don’t you think Hollywood could do with a rethink about its values?
Hollywood is the biggest whorehouse on the block, no doubt about it. But it’s only hurt itself by stealing more and more money over the years. It has stolen more without giving back. The Hollywood I used to know was more accountable.

How do you feel about someone watching your films on a reduced screen format, like a mobile phone?
Well, that’s exactly what it is. A reduction. We used to worship movies. The cast, the crew, the extras. The location, the set design. Everything was a creative challenge. Some days you couldn’t go shoot because the cops would bust you. Nobody can understand how difficult it is to make a movie unless they’ve done it. Crafting image after beautiful image. And now they’re all on YouTube. The idea that some moron sitting in a subway is watching one of my movies on his phone is depressing to me.

Any advice for budding filmmakers?
Make a statement and tell a story. But a lot of it is luck. JFK came to me after being trapped in an elevator with a raging socialist for eight floors. This woman wouldn’t stop about the Kennedy assassination. It had an impact on me, and I made a movie that lasts three hours and eight minutes. Inspiration comes when you least expect it.

Are you against product placement in your films?
As long as it doesn’t interrupt the story, I’m fine with it. If it’s Coke or Pepsi, who cares? It’s a cola.

What do you think about the potential of an Asian film going global?
There’s no way that a Chinese or Indian film will go truly global. Probably ever. It’s a socio-geographical reality: language. As Winston Churchill said when he was trying to resurrect the British empire, “The greatest strength we have is the English language.”

How did you win a Bronze Heart?
Because I killed a man. And by killing him, I probably saved the lives of others in my platoon. But I’m not particularly proud of it. I’ve been very scared in combat situations and held back. We got our asses kicked and handed back to us by people with nothing but national pride. That war hurt us deeply. There are people all over America with missing limbs and no memories.

And who knows how many Vietnamese we killed. Three million?

So no Natural Born Killers II. What’s next?
Documentaries. I’ve made three to date. I’m making two more. The latest one looks at the Iranian president. I’m fascinated by the Iranian situation. If Bush had succeeded in Iraq, he would be doing better in Iran. He had the wind taken from his sails.

If you were involved in the making of a new version of Wall Street, which we gather you’re not [Stone chuckles, knowingly], how would you cast Gordon Gekko?
I wouldn’t cast him any differently. Michael Douglas would play Gordon Gekko, and I’d take up the story when he’s released from jail. But then the anti-hero was really Charlie Sheen’s character, not Gordon Gekko, who only appears in 20 minutes of the movie.
But anyway, I’ve come to realize that it’s important not to make movies in your career about assholes. I mean, come on. Would people really watch another movie about bankers? They’re all pigs. And you can’t make too many movies about pigs. My problem is that I can’t make sequels. I tend to kill my characters off in the first film.

So you’re clearly comfortable giving a platform to morally questionable people?
Everything is negotiable. I would sleep with the devil to make a good movie.